


Who's Who from a Borrowers Point of View

by RoseBloodCat



Series: Pocket Animator AU [4]
Category: Bendy and the Ink Machine, The Borrowers - All Media Types
Genre: Borrower Henry, Borrower!Henry, Tiny Henry, borrower au, but Henry has to come up with names, he has some favorites, how borrowers tell humans apart, just because the studio has so many of them, may just post a list of the others later, mostly they just hear/feel them, pocket animator au, these are mostly the ones with titles, they don't use names, they rarely let themselves see humans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-28
Updated: 2019-12-28
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:35:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,124
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21996121
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RoseBloodCat/pseuds/RoseBloodCat
Summary: Borrowers never let themselves use the names of the humans they borrow from as a way to distance themselves. Instead they use titles to tell them apart.Henry has far too many humans to do that, so he has to come up with nicknames for them. But, thankfully, a lot of his humans have job titles, so he has fewer he needs to come up with nicknames for.
Series: Pocket Animator AU [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1556071
Comments: 10
Kudos: 52





	Who's Who from a Borrowers Point of View

**Author's Note:**

> This is actually earlier in the timeline for this series and is built on Henry being careful to not be seen by the studio staff, but also him needing a way to identify which people in the studio he's talking about.
> 
> I have more nicknamed characters, but most of the ones here all are referred to by their Job titles. I may post a list of various staff nicknames later. For now, however, I just wanted to write something for this AU.

Borrower’s, generally, never remembered the names of the humans they borrowed from.

There was a reason for it, one Henry knew well. Remembering the names of humans could lead to familiarity with them. 

Borrowers that let themselves feel too familiar with their humans would get too comfortable with them. They wouldn’t be as cautious. And forgetting to be cautious could lead to getting hurt, or even getting _caught_ by the humans.

The closest they would get would be calling the humans by descriptions. Things like Male human, Female human, Old human, girl child, boy child, etc. Simple things to tell which ones they were referring too, but also detached enough to not let themselves be too close.

But the studio had so many humans moving about each day, Henry realized that he would _have_ to refer to his humans with more personal terms just so he could tell them apart. _Many_ more than most Borrowers would have to keep track of. It lead to him taking time to spy on the humans to find features about them he could use to tell them all apart. It also helped that, being a studio, a number of the humans had titles he could use for them.

After a while, Henry had figured out a schedule for his humans, including ways to refer to them. And learning about them as he went.

The first person to come in every day was the Music Director, closely followed by the Projectionist. They would both come in as the sun was rising, eat breakfast they brought with them in the Lunchroom (they were both very neat eaters, meaning little to no crumbs for Henry to nab), then they would split apart and start working. The Music Director would go to his department and work at his desk or he would examine all the instruments in the Recording Studio.

The Projectionist, on the other hand, would go through the studio and check all the projectors before retreating to either the Theater (where he would watch some of the reels and check them over) or to his booth in the Music department.

After those two would be the President and the Accountant, both of whom would eat something from the Lunchroom then go to their respective offices to work. But, after a few hours, the President would leave his office and start helping the artists and storyboarders finish the next cartoon on time.

Following them would be the Lyricist and the Janitor. The Lyricist would just head to his workplace and hole up for the day, only emerging for food and drinks and to go home at the end of the day.

The Janitor would go off and meander about the studio for most of the day, cleaning as he went. He wasn’t very thorough, but he did enough for the studio to be considered “clean”.

And, about once a week, the Gent Mechanic would come in after them. He wasn’t there often, but he worked hard to keep the plumbing in the studio in good condition. Then the rest of the staff would arrive, all of them in larger groups that were harder for Henry to keep track of.

Henry also kept notes on the behavior and his opinions on the humans that worked at the studio.

The Music Director was a very punctual man, but also very prone to stress and had a very short temper. He was very good at his job, there was no denying that, but he was very critical of the other workers. Henry liked him, he had a very good work ethic, but he needed to let himself relax more. He couldn’t help thinking the man would make a great Borrower.

The Projectionist was a favorite of Henry’s humans. He liked hiding in the walls of the man’s booth when he felt overwhelmed and couldn’t borrow. He would sing to himself sometimes, Henry found it very relaxing to listen to.

The President owned the company and had it named after him. He was a touch of an egoist, from what Henry could tell. But he had a good heart and tried to take care of his employees as best he could, taking care of complaints as quickly as he could manage, making sure there was dry food in the Lunchroom if anyone forgot to bring food, and helping out where he could. He also gave amazing inspirational speeches. 

The Accountant was as punctual as the Music Director and was prone to twice the stress. He drank his coffee “black as tar”, hated when his work was interrupted, was prone to gossip when he visited the Lunchroom, and ate muffins every morning. He didn’t suffer fools and got frustrated very easily.

The Lyricist, despite working in the Music Department, was a very quiet man. He tended to lock himself in an office in total silence to write lyrics for the Music Director’s songs. Henry wasn’t sure how the silence helped him write, the borrower thought that at least _listening_ to the song he was writing for would help but apparently not.

Henry had a bit of a soft spot for the Janitor. He was the youngest staff member and would help out other staff members by doing snacks and drink runs for people who couldn’t leave their desks. He was clumsy and always stumbling over his own feet, a messy eater (so many crumbs for Henry to grab!) and incredibly forgetful. He didn’t think the teen wouldn’t make a very good Borrower (as harsh as it seemed), but Henry was _sure_ the poor human would forget his own head if it wasn’t attached to him. And the human had an appetite that was downright _otherworldly._ He would eat anything and everything that he could get his hands. (Henry _deeply_ wished he could do that.)

The Gent Mechanic, though he wasn’t around very often, was the most dangerous human for Henry. He was harsher than most of the other people who worked in the studio, he was a hard worker, and took his job very seriously. But he was _so dangerous_ to Henry, simply because the human in question was the only one who regularly _went inside the walls_ of the studio.

He had nicknames for other staff members, but the fact that so many of them had titles for their jobs helped him, but it was still hard at times to remember each of their schedules so he could work around them.

Even with all of that, Henry rarely left the walls anyways. It was easier and safer to just wait until the end of the workday to go borrowing.

But that didn’t make people-watching (or rather, listening) any less of an entertaining hobby for him.


End file.
